There was a time when SEO meant manipulating various signals such as the links to your website from other websites to rank higher in the search engines such as Google by pleasing its algorithm.

While it’s still true in some cases, the fundamental nature of SEO has changed as the algorithms applied by Google have become more advanced. These days, SEO is focused on pleasing the end user and engaging them in a natural and organic manner. It is important to realize that the fundamental goal of Google is to deliver the most relevant and valuable content for every single search query and therefore, it should also be the underlying goal of any well-designed SEO strategy.

In the following section, various essential aspects of on-site and on-page SEO factors will be covered that will give you deep insight in to some of the basics of a successful SEO strategy.

These days, SEO is focused on pleasing the end user and engaging them in a natural and organic manner. It is important to realize that the fundamental goal of Google is to deliver the most relevant and valuable content for every single search query and therefore, it should also be the underlying goal of any well-designed SEO strategy.

In the following section, various essential aspects of on-site and on-page SEO factors will be covered that will give you deep insight in to some of the basics of a successful SEO strategy.

Keyword Research

The basis of any successful SEO strategy is keyword research and selection. The end goal is to find keywords and phrases with high traffic volume, great commercial intent as well as competition at a level that may be reachable for your website taking into account the current rankings and authority of your website. Once the keywords have been selected, the best way to go forward is to commit to successfully ranking those keywords and build further on their success.

Backend

Needless to say, the underlying code of your website also needs to be SEO friendly. Google’s bots and crawlers should find it easy to crawl and index your website. The code should also make it easy for you to manage any changes including various important SEO elements as well as the URLs of the website. The URLs of the website should be chosen as per the best practice. These shouldn’t duplicate and should be customizable. All the old web pages whether from within the current website or from an old website need to be 301 redirected to the new location.

Target Pages

Choosing or creating special target pages can be highly profitable as these pages can become the focus of particular keywords and phrases. It is recommended to target up to 5 keywords per page depending on the topical and semantic relationship between the selected keywords. Since homepage is the most important page of your website, it is recommended to target the most important keywords on the homepage.

Keyword Targeting

Certain elements of a web page need to have keyword included:

  • Page Title: The page title should include the most important keywords for that page. The keyword should be included at least once, preferably as close to the start as is appropriate.
  • URLs: The page URL should include the main keyword or phrase. This helps in making a page relevant for a particular search query for search engines.
  • Meta Description: As far as the Meta description is concerned, it is not considered to be a ranking factor in Google’s algorithms but it plays a very important role in user engagement and click through rate. It acts as an advertisement in the search engine result pages and therefore, it should be appealing, engaging as well as keyword relevant.
  • Images and Image Alt Attribute: Ideally, each web page should contain at least one image. Presence of an image on a web page completes the information on that page and is also an opportunity for the Webmaster to optimize the image through filename, title and alt attribute using the main keyword of that page.
  • Headlines (H1): It is considered SEO best practice to include the main keyword phrase for a web page in the main headline of that web page.

Web Page Content

Each web page should have a minimum of 400 to 600 words. The content should include the target keyword for that web page at least two times. The content should also contain other semantically and thematically related keywords. Needless to say, the content on the page needs to be valuable for the end user, unique and shouldn’t be just self-promotion.

The content of the web page needs to be appropriate and relevant so that a visitor isn’t likely to click back to the search results to look for an alternative and more relevant website or page. The content should be of such high value to the visitors so that they feel obligated to share it socially or point a link to it.

Content on the Whole Website

The keywords chosen in the keyword research phase as well as other semantically and thematically keywords chosen as part of the overall SEO strategy should be used throughout the website in the page titles as well as in the content directly. Their placement should be authentic and shouldn’t be haphazard. The inclusion of these keywords should seem authentic and relevant. As far as the overall content is concerned, it should be valuable, useful and related to the target market and industry surrounding the chosen keywords. In simple terms, the end goal of the content should be to position the website as an authoritative and credible resource within the industry. The content should satisfy the intrinsic needs and questions of your target market and should go beyond mere description of various services and products provided by your business.

As far as the overall content is concerned, it should be valuable, useful and related to the target market and industry surrounding the chosen keywords. In simple terms, the end goal of the content should be to position the website as an authoritative and credible resource within the industry. The content should satisfy the intrinsic needs and questions of your target market and should go beyond mere description of various services and products provided by your business.

Internal Linking

Internal linking also plays an important role in determining the authority of a particular web page as compared to the other web pages in a website. The importance of internal linking is determined by the quantity as well as quality of links from internal pages to a particular web page and the anchor text used for creating those links.

The internal links can help in enhancing the power and authority of a particular webpage in the eyes of Google and help in selecting a particular webpage for particular phrase in the search engine result pages. Ideally, each of such targeted webpage should have at least one link directly from the footer as well as from the homepage. Also, the target page should have a high number of contextual links from other website pages with anchor text as the keywords for that particular webpage.

Social Sharing

As far as the social signals are concerned, these have become a very important component in overall SEO. Social signals may not only play an important role in the search engine rankings but these also help in getting high quality natural links to your website. Therefore, it is important that you make it extremely easy for your website visitors to share the content on various social media networks.

This usually means including various social sharing buttons on the webpage. Also, it is important to have valuable content that is worthy enough to be shared by the visitors.

User Experience

When Google ranks a webpage, it not only takes a close look at the code and content of the website but it also takes into account interaction of visitors with the website which is another name for user experience. The navigation of the website needs to be intuitive, logical and extremely clear. Also, users should find it easy to get any information and that information should be presented in an easy to be understood manner. Ideally, your goal should be to give all the information to the visitors that they need without them even knowing that they need it. The web design should be pleasing and attractive and your website should show well on all kinds of devices and browsers.


 The above-mentioned on page and on-site SEO strategies are only a part of the overall factors that make up a successful SEO campaign. It is estimated that various on-site and on page factors that also include domain name components carry around 35% weight in terms of factors contributing to rankings in SEO. The other 65% include various offsite factors such as quality and quantity of links to the website, traffic signals, user signals, social media metrics as well as mention of brand name or domain name.

It is important to realize that doing too much of something may turn out to be as bad or worse than not doing anything or enough in terms of search engine optimization. A reliable and experienced SEO professional will always check whether a particular change seem natural and whether it contributes to a good user experience. These are the same factors checked by Google’s algorithms when it comes to search engine results.